Houston Chronicle Review: 'The Man Who Made Vermeers' by Jonathan Lopez

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Fascist forger’s bio a great flashlight read
Douglas Britt / Houston Chronicle

The electricity came back on in my house last night, which means today I’m transitioning away from directing pious glares of disapproval at the power haves to offering cringeing, apologetic gazes to the power have-nots. If it’s any consolation, I’ll tell them, knowing full well that it’s not, we still don’t have cable or Internet access. I’ll miss the badge of martyrdom, but I’d rather have the A/C.

However, my time as a have-not gave me a new litmus test to apply when recommending books to friends, and I can say with authority that Jonathan Lopez’s The Man Who Made Vermeers: Unvarnishing the Legend of Master Forger Han Van Meegeren makes for a terrific read, even by flashlight as you lay on top of sweat-soaked sheets wishing you’d thought to buy a battery-operated fan before Hurricane Ike struck.

Any reasonably capable writer could have made the story of Van Meegeren, who got rich forging and selling fake Old Master paintings — including a Vermeer to Hermann Goering — a page turner, and Lopez certainly does that.

But he also digs deeper, showing that what made Van Meegern’s fake Vermeer’s successful was not so much their similarity to the real things — which, in fact, declined as his career progressed — as his ability to make the paintings resonate with the zeitgeist of the period between the two world wars, when fascism was on the rise. He also effectively “reclaimed” (i.e., invented) a “lost” period of religious paintings from Vermeer’s career that lent itself to the subtle symbolic coding that allowed art-world experts to see what they wanted to see in paintings that today, even in black-and-white reproduction, look unbelievably kitschy.

And Lopez shows how Van Meegeren duped Lt. Joseph Piller, the young Jewish Dutchman who first arrested him for trading with the Nazis, into turning a blind eye to the crook’s history of support for fascism and helping create the popular image of the forger as an artist driven by the contempt of unfair modernist critics to show the world, including the Nazis, what he was capable of. In fact, Lopez writes, Van Meegeren’s early work as an artist in his own right, while stylistically conservative, was fairly well received and declined, along with critics’ opinions of it, only after he steeped himself in forgery and forever muddled his own artistic voice even as his technical mastery grew.

If Lopez’s book is that compelling by flashlight, I can only imagine what reading it with the lights on is like.

Brooklyn Rail Review: 'The Man Who Made Vermeers' by Jonathan Lopez

Jonathan Lopez, The Man Who Made Vermeers: Unvarnishing the Legend of Master Forger Han van Meegeren

In 1945, Han van Meegeren was arrested in a liberated Amsterdam by a Dutch resistance fighter, not only because van Meegeren (an art dealer and painter) had close ties to local fascists, but because during the war he had sold off one of his nation’s greatest treasures, a recently discovered Vermeer, to none other than Hermann Goering, head of the SS and a man who envied Hitler’s collection of Old Masters. But van Meegeren had an excuse, one that turned him from arch-traitor to something like a patriot—the Vermeer he had sold to the German was a fake, painted by van Meegeren himself.

That’s not all. Pride of place in the Dutch Boijmans Museum was held by what more than one critic called Vermeer’s greatest painting, The Supper at Emmaus. This, too, was from the brush of the master forger.

What makes Jonathan Lopez’s book such an engrossing read are not only his details of art forgers and their methods (such as over-painting on canvases fitting a particular period, after scraping them to the base layer), but his description of how van Meegeren read the minds of the collectors he was set on fooling.

A Dutch–fascist theorist of the 1930s, and friend of the forger, claimed that the Netherlands’ earlier glory—don’t forget it was the world’s chief power in the 17^th century—was based on the fact that, though the elite was Protestant, the masses were Catholic, and their spirituality gave the era a special, elevated tone. Vermeer, who was a Protestant that had married into a Catholic family, had, aside from a few early, weak works, never painted a religious picture. Since the artist left few works overall, many critics speculated that he may have taken up biblical themes in lost pieces. Van Meegeren obligingly provided them, after being inspired by the kitsch he saw at the Aryan art festival accompanying the 1936 Berlin Olympics.

But here’s the crowning touch. Not only did the Vermeer forger dupe Goering and leading art dealers, he even tricked the man who arrested him, selling the soldier the story that he took up forgery because his first gallery show had been trounced by critics, and he was determined to make fools of them (and the Nazis) with his new Old Masters.

All previous books have shared this view of the forger’s life, which, Lopez shows, is also fake. Van Meegeren was an old hand at forgery, way before his first art show, and was a dyed-in-the-wool reactionary, pouring some of his ill-gotten gains into supporting a right-wing, anti-degenerate art magazine. Lopez does a wonderful job depicting the pre-World War II art world, in which American millionaires like Andrew Mellon proved particularly easy pickings. He also gives a vivid depiction of the crafty and corrupt van Meegeren, a well-rounded portrait depicting his absolute shallowness.

—Jim Feast, The Brooklyn Rail

Errol Morris: Bamboozling Ourselves Part 3

Bamboozling Ourselves (Part 3)

By Errol Morris

The Nazi Aesthetic

I was interested in the controversy surrounding a book of watercolors and drawings that is given only cursory attention in Dolnick’s book. Jonathan Lopez [10] puts the book, “Teekeningen 1,” front and center. It is in fact a framing device for his argument. References to “Teekeningen 1″ occur at the very beginning and near the very end.

JONATHAN LOPEZ: The book was found in Hitler’s library at the central offices of the Nazi government, the Reichschancellery in Berlin.

ERROL MORRIS: Tell me about this.

JONATHAN LOPEZ: I actually own a copy of this book. It’s an enormous tome with gold lettering and a big red insignia right in the center. So it’s got the red, black and gold colors of the Nazi party across the front of it. Some of the art in it is just kitsch; some of it has very strong Nazi-istic overtones.

Cover design, Teekeningen 1; Private Collection.

And it is paired up with poetry, most of it written by Martien Beversluis, a really hardcore Nazi friend of Van Meegeren’s. The whole project seems to have been conceived as a collaborationist gesture. And at some point in 1942, Van Meegeren signed a copy using artist’s charcoal. And he inscribed it: “To my beloved Führer in grateful tribute – Han van Meegeren.” [Dem geliebten Führer in dankbarer Anerkennung gewidmet von Han van Meegeren.] Some friend of his who was able to actually get this book to Hitler, or some friend of a friend, delivered it because it was found in Hitler’s library just days after the end of the war.

ERROL MORRIS: How did the inscription come to light?

JONATHAN LOPEZ: Even before anyone knew anything at all about Van Meegeren as the forger of Vermeer, there were people in and around Amsterdam who knew about him because of his pro-Nazi reputation. So when a young Dutch reporter, Jan Spierdijk, found the book in Berlin, it was news. One of the Resistance newspapers, De Waarheid, published Spierdijk’s account of what the inscription said. It was not a huge piece of news because Van Meegeren was not a famous person at that point, but it was such an outrageous thing that it made it into the newspaper. The newspaper did not print a facsimile of the inscription until months later. The original July 11, 1945, article had the content of the inscription noted only in the text of a sidebar to Spierdijk’s article about visiting the Reichschancellery.

Read the rest of this installment at the NYTimes.com

Errol Morris NYTimes: Bamboozling Ourselves...

Bamboozling Ourselves (Part 1)

By Errol Morris

This is the first of seven installments of “Bamboozling Ourselves.” Read the rest of the series.

Oh World — the Devil’s Orb —
Your vanity shall lead you to hell.
— Martien Berversluis, Teekeningen 1

1.

A GRUDGE

Museum Boijmans-Van Beuningen, Rotterdam
“The Supper at Emmaus” by Han van Meegeren.

Why do people believe in imaginary returns, frauds and fakes?

Bernard Madoff, A.I.G. , W.M.D.’s … How did this happen? Do we believe things because it is in our self-interest? Or is it because we can be manipulated by others? And, if so, under what circumstances?

Last year, two different books on that subject appeared within months of each other. Not only did both tackle the question of fakery, they were both about the same man: Han van Meegeren, arguably the most successful art forger of all time. Edward Dolnick’s “The Forger’s Spell” was released first (Edward Dolnick’s wife is on the board of The New York Times Company), followed by Jonathan Lopez’s “The Man Who Made Vermeers.” The titles provide a clue to the different goals of the authors — Dolnick’s interest in the nature of the trickery, the spell that Van Meegeren cast; Lopez’s interest in the nature of the man who did the tricking, the man who cast the spell.

There is something compelling about two people writing about the same man at the same time, as if the authors themselves might be doppelgangers, or at least mirrored two aspects of Van Meegeren’s biography.

Both books begin on May 29, 1945. Shortly after the liberation of Holland, Han van Meegeren, a painter and art dealer living in Amsterdam was arrested for collaboration with the Third Reich. He was accused among other things of having sold a Vermeer to Reichsmarshal Hermann Göring — essentially of having plundered the patrimony of his homeland for his own benefit and the benefit of the Nazis. To save his skin — the penalty for collaborating was imprisonment or hanging — Van Meegeren revealed that the painting sold to Göring and many other paintings that he had sold as works of the Dutch masters were forgeries. He had painted all of them.

On July 21, 1945, The Times weighed in on the story: “Authenticity of Several Paintings Sold as Vermeers Is Questioned” (pdf).

The authenticity of several paintings introduced to the public as newly discovered works of Jan Vermeer, seventeenth century Dutch master, is in question and the case has become a national sensation in England. Originally many of these paintings were introduced to the public by Hans van Meegeren (sic), modern Dutch painter. Soon after the liberation of the Netherlands Van Meegeren was arrested for collaboration with the Germans and is now in prison awaiting trial. The press agency Anepaneta, which operates as a government mouthpiece, asserted a few days ago that Van Meegeren had made a statement that he himself painted the supposed Vermeers… Art experts say they are not convinced that the statements attributed to Van Meegeren are true. The director of the Rotterdam Museum said the prisoner was a fantasist who had a grudge against museums and similar institutions. A painting restorer in The Hague said that if one of the disputed works which he transferred to new canvas recently, “Pilgrims to Emmaus” [“Supper at Emmaus”] was indeed a forgery, then the painter must be considered a genius in that particular line.

“A genius in that particular line.” But what “particular line” is this? If the painting was indeed a forgery, then must the painter be considered a genius? Incredulity followed by skepticism. The Times article continued:

“If the rumors prove to be true,” the newspaper ["Volkskrant"] said, “then the best experts and completely reputable persons have been the dupes of a deception which was fashioned with unparalleled skill and in which, besides the forger himself, many middlemen must have taken part…” Van Meegeren and other major figures in the Netherlands charged with collaboration have yet to be brought to trial.

Van Meegeren was one of the “major figures in the Netherlands charged with collaboration.”

Time magazine was more forthright in their appraisal. In an account dated just 10 days after the Times article (Time, July 30, 1945), Van Meegeren is unambiguously described as a “Dutch Nazi.”

When the exquisite Christ at Emmaus was found in the linen closet of a Paris house (TIME, Sept. 19, 1938) it was one of the big art stories of the decade… Last week, a Dutch Nazi confessed that he had painted the “Vermeer” himself — and, what’s more, had knocked off six others, plus two Pieter de Hooches for good measure… The master picture-forger was one Hans van Meegeren, a little-known Dutch artist. Although he worshiped Adolf Hitler, he felt no compunction about unloading a fake on fellow Nazi Hermann Göring. Göring got Christ and the Adulteress in a trade for 173 paintings… Some Dutch art experts, who stand to lose considerable prestige over the affair, just plain don’t believe a word of Van Meegeren’s story.

But just what was it that they didn’t believe? Presumably, that he had really painted these “masterpieces” himself. They wanted him to prove it. And so, Van Meegeren was asked to paint yet one more forgery, “Christ in the Temple.” But of course, it really wasn’t a forgery. This time the authorities knew that Van Meegeren was the painter.

Getty Images Van Meegeren paints “Christ in the Temple.”

Over two years after Van Meegeren’s arrest, he was put on trial in Amsterdam. On Oct. 29, 1947, The Times reported the following:

Hans van Meegeren (sic), the Dutch painter who shocked the art world by foisting a series of false Vermeers, Pieter de Hoghs and other old masters on experts, finally was placed on trial in District Court here today. He pleaded guilty and the state demanded a sentence of two years’ imprisonment. The charge on which Van Meegeren was arraigned specified that he sold works bearing the spurious signatures of famous artists. It was not a simple case of forgery, inasmuch as the defendant created the works after the style of the seventeenth century masters, without actually copying any of their canvases…

And then on Nov. 12, The Times reported that Van Meegeren had been sentenced to a year in prison. Asked outside the courtroom for his reaction to the sentence, Van Meegeren simply said, “I think I must take it as a good sport.”

Getty Images: Van Meegeren on trial.

How did he do it? Why did he do it? Newspapers reveal the thinking and confusions of their time, but they don’t necessarily provide answers. Was Van Meegeren a collaborator or an artist? Or both? And if he was a genius, what was his genius? His ability to trick people? Or was he able to trick people because he was an artist of genius? Who was Van Meegeren? A con man or Nazi? Did he forge paintings solely for monetary reward or was something more sinister involved?

To be sure, the Van Meegeren story raises many, many questions. Among them: what makes a work of art great? Is it the signature of (or attribution to) an acknowledged master? Is it just a name? Or is it a name implying a provenance? With a photograph we may be interested in the photographer but also in what the photograph is of. With a painting this is often turned around, we may be interested in what the painting is of, but we are primarily interested in the question: who made it? Who held a brush to canvas and painted it? Whether it is the work of an acclaimed master like Vermeer or a duplicitous forger like Van Meegeren — we want to know more. ..

The rest of the series is available at the NYTimes.com